


Certainty

by Ink_On_Parchment



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Minor Character Death, Ned's Accomplice, Robbery, injuries, spoilers for episode 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 13:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15908841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink_On_Parchment/pseuds/Ink_On_Parchment
Summary: Ned remembers things while he's unconscious, important things. Things like a beautiful house right out of a period film and running for his life.He drifts into consciousness in fits and starts.Ned hears things while he's awake. Things like Duck's voice and Aubrey's conversation with Mama.





	Certainty

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends! I just wanted to let you know that yes, I did take some of the dialogue straight from the podcast. It's episode 14, from where Aubrey is talking to Mama. 
> 
> Regardless, I hope you enjoy!!

 

Ned drifts into consciousness in fits and starts.

 A gentle hand presses on his ribs and a sharp pain sends him flying back into the waking world. Voices are speaking in urgent voices as he tries to move, tries to get away. The hand had retreated immediately, but the pain lingers, familiar. He’s broken ribs before. Panic starts to set in, but soon there’s a warm hand on his shoulder and a voice even more familiar than the pain telling him it’s going to be okay. The pain meds kick in just as quickly and he drifts off again, but he’s calmer in that instance than he has any right to be.

 

* * *

 

 

The light spilling through the gaps in the curtains is the only light they’ve got to see by, not since they put out the headlights a couple miles back. He can’t see or hear Stephen but they’ve been doing this together long enough that he knows without a doubt he’s got the other side of the house covered. It’s a beautiful home, looks like something out of an old-time movie with its columns and its wide windows, and he has a feeling it’ll be the perfect place to sweep before they hit the road for a while.

Creeping closer so that he has a clearer line of sight, he’s thankful for the cover the trees give. It’s so much easier doing this in secluded areas like this one. The binoculars bring the details of the door into sharp focus, and he can’t help the small spike of relief even as he flicks the binoculars towards the windows. The locks look old, even if they aren’t quite as old as the house. This fits all the criteria for the perfect place.

Movement out of a second story window catches his eye, a shadow outlined in light moves across the window and then disappears. It’s a small thing, but his stomach shivers with nervousness at the sudden movement in the otherwise still home. He takes stock of the front of the house one more time, out of habit more than anything, and then high tails it back to the car as quickly as he can.

 

* * *

 

He’s hazy through the x-ray, the sounds of the machines a dull, static roar that do nothing to calm him down. He can do nothing but lie there and feel the ground leave his feet over and over again even if there is a hard hospital bed under his back. There are more voices, but it isn’t Duck nor is it Aubrey or even Mama. There’s a feeling of hollowness that settles through him that has nothing to do with the cracks in his ribs even as the mechanical sounds quiet and the voices get louder. The bed moves under him and he drifts back into darkness again.

 

* * *

 

 

Stephen‘s breath seems unnaturally loud beside him, but he knows it’s just the way the darkness makes everything seem loud. His heart is beating a sharp staccato against his ribs, the way it always does when he’s got his hands on a lock pick. He has to fight off the irrational thought that everyone can hear it and Stephen’s breathing. The lock clicks over with a satisfying _snick_ right as his heart thumps.  He withdraws his tools, motioning Stephen forward as he pushes the door open.

Stephen waves towards the stairs and Ned just nods. This place should have enough good stuff on the ground floor that it’s worth splitting up.

“I’ll take it.” He whispers, thinking about the figure in the window. He’s already headed for the stairs.

 He makes it to the top of the stairs in relative silence, deciding it’s best to head away from the window he saw movement in. There are tiny things sitting out like knickknacks on shelves that look antique that he grabs and stows away, but he has a feeling one of these rooms could be a treasure trove.

He makes his way through what seems to be a storage room and a closet, storing things all the while. He’s picked up a jewelry box and a set of small crystal vases before he stumbles across a bedroom. His heart rate spikes, a hundred times worse than when he was picking the lock, when his eyes lock on a sleeping figure. It looks like an older woman with no signs of waking and no signs of her husband, who he knows is in the house. He scans the surroundings, adrenaline overpowering self-preservation for a brief moment, and he snags a small wooden jewelry box off the otherwise bare vanity before easing back out of the room with silent feet and a hammering heart.

He’s halfway down the staircase when he hears a door open, and his blood runs cold. He doesn’t stop going, but he does turn. It’s a teenager, obviously confused and still in pajamas. He can’t see their face from his angle, but it’s obvious they’re headed towards the stairs.

He catches sight of Stephen running full tilt towards the door just as he hears a startled yell and the _oof, thud thud thud_ of someone falling down the stairs. That’s when he hears the tell-tale signs of another set of footsteps, this one much louder than Stephen’s have ever been. He must have missed the crash that Stephen used to delay the man when the teenager fell, because he can hear the man a room away when he gets to the bottom of the stairs. Something has gone very wrong. He doesn’t even have time to be thankful that the teenager hadn’t caught a full look at him before he’s yanking the front door open and running towards the trees, barely remembering to keep the door from slamming behind him.

Stephen is already halfway through the trees, but it doesn’t take him long to catch up, bags an ill-gotten weight against his back. His heartbeat doesn’t slow even while they throw the bags and their tools in the trunk of the car. He shoots a grin at Stephen as he climbs in, even though they can barely see in the nonexistent moonlight. The engine turns over with deafening roar after all the silence. Even though he can smell smoke, he doesn’t look back to see the faint red-orange glow through the trees.

 

* * *

 

Duck’s voice is the first thing he hears. For all that he knows about Duck Newton, there’s a dependability in him that settles something that hasn’t settled in Ned in years. They’ve known each other a long time, and been friends almost as long—before monsters, the kind you told kids about, were real. Hearing him as obviously awkward as ever was the kind of comforting only having his feet on solid ground was.

Then the room gets quiet. It’s the kind of silence that weighs on you, that you can almost touch. He’d say something off kilter just to break it if he could get his body to cooperate. It makes his skin itch. The silence builds until Aubrey says. “Hey Duck, could you go get me a coffee from the vending machine at the end of the room? I-I don’t care if it’s gross vending machine coffee. I- I just.”

Wait.

What time is it?

How long has he been out?

How long have they been waiting with him for Aubrey to need coffee? It was barely evening when they set out. Is it morning? What day is it, and have they really stayed all this time?

His thoughts are interrupted by Duck asking about creamer and size and mocha and every variation of coffee imaginable, even though Duck and Ned both know that the vending machine has two sizes and you’ll be lucky if they’ve stocked sugar, let alone anything else. Again, it’s comforting. Kepler is weird. Duck Newton is awkwardly earnest. Eventually, Mama convinces him to go pick up two large black coffees, and he hears footsteps and the door open and close.

Footsteps lead back to where Aubrey’s voice had come from. Then, the faint creaks and groans of plastic as someone, he presumed Mama, settled into a chair beside her. Again, heavy silence filled the room before someone takes a too-loud breath.

Mama sounds nervous, like she’s reaching out to something she isn’t sure she wants to grab. “Aubrey, what’s going on? You seem really shaken up? Obviously it was a tough night, but did something happen?”

There’s another audible breath, this one shakier than the last, and the realization that this conversation is not for him curls heavy and sour in his stomach. As close as they have grown, as much comfort as Ned takes from them being here, he is suddenly very sure that Aubrey would not want him present for this if she knew he could hear what was going on. It’s a knowledge that makes the heaviness to his limbs feel even more constrictive.

He is proven right almost immediately, because then Aubrey is talking about how she met Mama, about how Mama saw her use magic in one of her shows before she came to Kepler. Aubrey talks about her job all the time. She loves it, from what Ned can tell, even if it wasn’t always glamorous. She could talk about Dr. Harris Bonkers for hours and tell you the ins and outs of card tricks and pyrotechnics that absolutely blew his mind. She’d thrown that same passion into learning real magic without even really questioning that real magic existed. Despite this, he’d never heard her talk about her life before Kepler.

When she started it sounded like she’d been holding this back a long time. Her words stumbled over each other, and she started and stopped in jumbled bursts like she wanted to be in every part of this story at once. “When I was, uh, eighteen, I was- the night I was leaving home-we, someone broke into our house. Two men, I don’t know. I was running to see what the sound was. I tripped and I hit my head on the banister of the stairs. And when I woke, the house was on fire. And I think that was my fault.”

His heart had picked up speed the minute she had said that someone broke into her house, but matching up two men and a house fire? There was no way that wasn’t them. No way it wasn’t him and Stephen who had robbed her blind that night. She had seen him too, even if it was just the back of him, and her dad was the one who had spooked Stephen. He could still hear her hitting the banister, the heavy thud as she fell down the stairs.

“It’s like I can almost remember it.” He hears Aubrey say, and his chest aches with something more than just the broken ribs.

For fuck’s sake he’d been relieved.

“I’m sorry for your house burning down, that must have been hard.” Mama says, and every part of Ned wishes he could echo that sentiment.

It takes Aubrey a long time to respond, and when she does the breath she takes is watery.  

“My mom died in the fire.”

Ned’s blood turns to ice.

“My dad got out, but the part my mom was in collapsed.”

Aubrey’s next breath hitches, and Ned’s catches in his lungs. He’d seen her mom. He’d crept ghost silent past her, stealing the nearest shiny object. He remembers opening the jewelry box that he’d grabbed from her vanity, hovering fingers over a delicate ruby-and-silver pendant thinking that it would bring in enough to make the whole ordeal worth it. He knows with horrifying certainty exactly where it is in the back room of The Cryptonomica.

Mama doesn’t respond, not for a long time, but he hears rustling fabric and Mama standing. It’s quiet again, before Mama says. “I’m gonna see what’s taking Duck so long with that coffee.”

With that the door opens and closes again, and Mama leaves Aubrey with cold comfort and Ned with the cold certainty that Aubrey Little’s mother died because of his actions.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
